The Museum and Gallery Shows to See in New York This Fall

This is a strong fall. The Met pairs Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock in a show that feels overdue, the Brooklyn Museum hands its galleries to manga, the Frick finally has room for real exhibitions again, and the New Museum is in its first fall in a building twice the size. Chelsea, meanwhile, opened its season with Lee Bul, Lynda Benglis and Tauba Auerbach in the same week.

The rule for this list was simple: every show is confirmed on the museum's or gallery's own site with dates in fall 2026. Where only an opening date is published, that is what we give you. Most gallery shows close in late October, so do those first. Museum shows run into winter.

For ticket hacks, read our free museum days guide. For how the gallery circuit works, read our guide to Chelsea, the Lower East Side and Tribeca.

The big museum shows

Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous

The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Upper East Side · October 4, 2026 to January 31, 2027

More than 120 works tracing the parallel lives of two painters who were married, shared a studio and are usually told as one story with a footnote. The show puts them side by side and lets Krasner take up her own room. This is the show of the season.

Go for: Krasner's late work. Know before you go: New York State residents pay what they wish at the Met's ticket counter.

Art of Manga

Brooklyn Museum · Prospect Heights · October 3, 2026 to January 31, 2027

Billed as the first major exhibition in the Americas to treat manga as fine art, with more than 600 original drawings. A companion installation, "Manga Before Manga," pulls Japanese prints and objects from the museum's own collection to show where the form came from.

Go for: original pages, where you can see the ink and the corrections. Know before you go: it will be crowded on weekends; go on a weekday morning.

Taryn Simon: Father Country I Do Love You

Guggenheim Museum · Upper East Side · September 18, 2026 to March 14, 2027

Simon makes exhaustive, uneasy projects out of archives, bureaucracy and power. The Guggenheim is also showing "Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now," a look at its Pop holdings, through January 10.

Go for: Simon's precision. Know before you go: pay what you wish on Tuesdays and Sundays from 4 to 5:30pm.

Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony

New Museum · Lower East Side · Opens September 25, 2026

The filmmaker and artist behind "Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death" gets the New Museum's new building for a major show running into January. Opening the same day: Diego Marcon, Ho Tzu Nyen and "The Bowery: Devil's Mile," a show about the street outside the front door.

Go for: Jafa, then the Bowery show. Know before you go: Thursdays from 7 to 9 are pay what you wish, reserved online.

Costume Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Upper East Side · Through January 10, 2027

The Costume Institute's 2026 exhibition, which pairs garments from the Met's collection with artworks across the museum to show how clothing and the body shape each other. The Met is also opening "Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany" on October 22.

Go for: the pairings, which pull fashion out of its usual box. Know before you go: weekday mornings are the only calm time.

Uptown and Midtown

Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450 to 1500

The Frick Collection · Upper East Side · October 15, 2026 to January 18, 2027

The first exhibition focused on Siena as a center of Renaissance bronze sculpture, with around forty works. It is exactly the kind of small, scholarly show the Frick does better than anyone.

Go for: the small bronzes, up close. Know before you go: pay what you wish on Wednesdays from 1:30 to 5:30pm.

Kent Monkman: Officer and Laughing Girl

The Frick Collection · Upper East Side · November 12, 2026 to February 22, 2027

Monkman, the Cree painter who restages European history painting from an Indigenous point of view, makes new work in response to Vermeer's "Officer and Laughing Girl" in the Frick's collection.

Go for: a living painter talking back to an Old Master in the same building. Know before you go: children under 10 are not admitted.

Neue Galerie 25th Anniversary Exhibition

Neue Galerie · Upper East Side · November 12, 2026 to January 11, 2027

The museum of Austrian and German art reopens its galleries after construction with a show marking its 25th year. Café Sabarsky reopens October 1.

Go for: the Klimt rooms and a slice of Sachertorte after. Know before you go: free on the first Friday of the month, 5 to 8pm.

Sacred Splendor: Jewish Ritual Art and Christian Treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague

The Jewish Museum · Upper East Side · September 18, 2026 to February 7, 2027

Objects from two faiths that shared one city for a thousand years. Also on view: "Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte," through November 15.

Go for: the Wiener Werkstätte show before it closes. Know before you go: free every Saturday.

Tone

Studio Museum in Harlem · Harlem · October 1, 2026 to January 3, 2027

A new show in the museum's new building on 125th Street, opening alongside the annual artists in residence exhibition. Kapwani Kiwanga's "BLEED" is on view through April.

Go for: the residents show, which is where you meet the next decade. Know before you go: free on Sundays.

MoMA's fall

Museum of Modern Art · Midtown · Ongoing

"It's Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection" opened August 1 and runs into 2027. "Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives," built around Marianne Wex's study of how women and men occupy public space, opened September 20.

Go for: the animation show, which is better than it has any right to be. Know before you go: free for New York State residents on Friday nights.

Downtown and the Meatpacking

Roy Lichtenstein: Like New and Charles Burchfield: Elemental

Whitney Museum · Meatpacking District · Open October 11 and October 22

Two fall openings at the Whitney. The Lichtenstein show joins "Roy Lichtenstein: 1997," already on view. Burchfield's hallucinatory watercolors of weather and insects are one of American art's strangest bodies of work. The 2026 Whitney Biennial closes October 12, so go now if you have not.

Go for: Burchfield. Know before you go: free on Friday nights from 5 to 10.

I'm So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now

International Center of Photography · Lower East Side · October 15, 2026 to January 11, 2027

A survey of Japanese women photographers across seven decades. Opening the same day: Laia Abril's "On Rape and Institutional Failure."

Go for: a history most people have never been shown. Know before you go: free on the third Thursday of the month.

Form, Shadow, Motion: Selections from the Burger Collection, Hong Kong

The Drawing Center · SoHo · October 23, 2026 to January 24, 2027

The only museum in the country devoted to drawing, on Wooster Street, with a show from a major private collection.

Go for: a quiet hour in SoHo. Know before you go: it pairs well with the Tribeca galleries ten minutes south.

Teresa Margolles: En el lugar de los hechos

MoMA PS1 · Long Island City · Through February 2027

Margolles makes work from the physical traces of violence in Mexico, and it is not easy. PS1 is free for everyone in 2026.

Go for: a serious show that costs nothing. Know before you go: closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The gallery shows

Gallery shows are free and close fast, mostly in late October. These are the ones we would build a Thursday around.

Lee Bul: The Anatomy of Every Setting Sun

Hauser & Wirth · 542 W 22nd St, Chelsea · September 10 to October 24

The Korean artist's first show at the gallery's 22nd Street building, running alongside shows by Arp and George Rouy.

Lynda Benglis and Torkwase Dyson

Pace · 540 W 25th St, Chelsea · September 11 to October 24

Benglis's "KNOTTING, TYING, FOLDING" and Dyson's "Seeing in Blue" on separate floors.

Jordan Wolfson

Gagosian · 555 W 24th St, Chelsea · September 18 to October 24

New sculptures incorporating found photographs, in Wolfson's first New York show with the gallery.

Tauba Auerbach: Zephyr, Zephyr

Paula Cooper Gallery · 521 W 21st St, Chelsea · September 10 to October 24

Across the street, Eric N. Mack's "You Red The Shirt Off My Back" runs the same dates at 534 W 21st.

Thomas Ruff and Nate Lowman

David Zwirner · 533 and 519 W 19th St, Chelsea · Through October 17 and October 24

Ruff's "jpegs ny" works from images of September 11. Lowman's shaped canvases take the form of keys.

Anthony McCall: Solid Light

Sean Kelly · 475 Tenth Ave · September 11 to October 31

Beams of projected light that become sculpture in haze. Walk through them.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Unnatural Habitat

Lisson Gallery · 504 W 24th St, Chelsea · September 15 to October 24

Followed at Lisson by Yu Hong, opening November 4.

Norman Lewis: Jumping Jive

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery · 100 Eleventh Ave, Chelsea · September 10 to November 14

A focused show on the Abstract Expressionist who too often gets left out of the story.

The Prime of Your Life: Women Artists Over 75

Marc Straus · 299 Grand St, Lower East Side · September 18 to October 31

The best group show premise of the season.

The Shout NY take

Do the galleries first, because they close in October. Do the Met's Krasner and Pollock in November, when the opening crowds have thinned. Save the Brooklyn Museum's manga show for a weekday. And if you only have one free evening, spend it at the Whitney on a Friday before the Biennial closes October 12. For more on the season, see fall things to do in New York and our October events calendar.